The Life of Riley: silhouette

Showing posts with label silhouette. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Cutting all the Things in Fabric and Vinyl

The Christmas before last I received a Silhouette Cameo machine as a gift from Mr. Riley. It was pretty exciting. And scary. Up until recently I had only used it for a couple of projects. The Matrix quilt and the Lighthouse Quilt.

I opened my mouth at a PTO meeting and said I could cut vinyl with it so I've upped my game and now I want to make all the things.

For school I did some letters and paws.

I'm still learning a bit about sizing the letters when doing multiple cuts. COUgars :) This one is probably temporary, though, since there is some painting that will get done once school is out.

This one was actually a "mistake" because it wasn't big enough, but we found a place for it.

Then I started projects that I've wanted to try around the house. We've had the menu board for a few months, but now its fancy.

And I made a vinyl bee of my logo (actually I should re-do it) and put it on the car. I used to have a magnet bumper sticker of a bee - but it got lost or stolen off the car.

Next I moved on to fabric letters with Wonder Under on them. I'm not sure why, but Alf the kitten was fascinated by the machine.

So the last of my bee word blocks from the Spelling Bee Quilt Bee are finally done. I'm in search of "The Perfect Yellow" to set them all together.

I have more plans for the Silhouette!

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

The Matrix Quilt: Hooray for Hollywood

Our Guild Quilt Challenge was due last night at our meeting. This year's theme was "Hooray for Hollywood". I've known since it was announced in January what kind of quilt I wanted to do.

I started it Friday.

You see, I've been working diligently for the last month on WD's birthday Minecraft quilt. I was doing the last of the quilting on Thursday when I decided two things. 1. The Minecraft quilt would not be done before his birthday and 2. I really wanted to make the Matrix quilt.

So, I did. I found the Matrix font online, downloaded it and created the design in Word. Then I transferred the design to the Silhouette program. (I got it last Christmas)

Then I put a paper backed iron-on fusible on the black fabric and ran it through the cutting machine.

I did four 12x12 blocks of black fabric and then a 6 x 12 piece for the words.

I pieced them together after peeling the paper, so no ironing seams! Then I fused the whole black piece to a piece of green ombre. Starting the top at the dark.

I spray basted the three layers, and then pinned over the top a neon green netting. I bought that on Sunday! Did the (roughly) straight line quilting on Sunday night and put the binding on Monday afternoon. Ready for voting at 6:30 last night!

In a fun twist, the backing is about as opposite from The Matrix as you can get, but I'm all about using things up! It finished up at 22.5 x 23.5

*I did some Google searches before I started, but I couldn't find another Matrix quilt, so I might quite possibly have a one-of-a-kind quilt here.

*At the meeting last night one of my fellow members exclaimed "Rachel! I know the Matrix quilt is yours because you're such a nerd!"

*You can find the Wikipedia article on The Matrix Movie here. - There were actually three, plus other franchising, as well.

*It's going to go hang up in our garage upstairs, where Mr. Riley plays games with friends. I can't wait until they see it!

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Color & Music: Violin Study - A Four-in-Art Quilt

It's Reveal Day for Four-in-Art.
Color and Music.
May I present: Violin Study

I once read a book about Synesthesia, by Oliver Sacks - Seeing colors related to things like numbers, sounds, and yes, music. I've never experienced it, but I do have a very talented pianist friend who does. She sees colors related to key signatures. I thought of that a lot while thinking of ideas for this project.

A violin is quite appropriate to the family, #1, #2 and #4 all can play the violin. #2 has since switched to the viola (and also plays piano). #3 plays the cello and #5 will more than likely play the violin. Yep, our goal is the string quartet with accompanist.

It didn't take me long to figure out what I wanted to do. This quilt is made of selvages and "quilted as you go". I had originally thought just the silhouette, but came across a split silhouette and knew it was perfect. After all, white light is made of all the colors, and I thought this was a striking way to present the idea.
Fortunately for this year, we have rather abandoned the size restrictions, I just didn't think I could do what I wanted on a much smaller scale. This quilt is about 38" x 54".